The girl that could not be named Esther. Winfried Seibert

a few passages without comment, then turned with the words In conclusion, the author writes to a rather amusing episode, which gives the impression that the whole article was similarly light-hearted:

      A party comrade insisted to me that we must avoid un-German, and especially Jewish, given names. He proudly stated that his boys had beautiful German names, Georg and Paul. I had to disappoint him. Georg comes from the Greek and has the beautiful and proud meaning of farmer. Paulus is an old Christian name of Latin origin, meaning small, modest. This name developed like Johannes. They were ‘Germanified,’ so to speak. From Georg we have forms sounding like old German, like Joerg, Joern, Juern, or Juergen, but that doesn‘t alter the fact that its origin is not German.

      The original doesn’t sound so easy-going; there the author ended with the following appeal:

      We desire to and should stand fast on this point — Our children, who are born German and are educated in the Folk Society of the Third Reich as pure German people, should bear truly German names that correspond to the true value of our German blood. There are no justifiable grounds to give them un-German names; in fact, there are many reasons not to. Everything supports the demand of GERMAN NAMES FOR GERMAN CHILDREN!⁵³› Reference

      Completely lacking in the Frankfurter Zeitung article were the vehement anti-Semitic outbursts with which Fahrenkrog punctuated his article, aside from various incorrect or at least questionable etymological derivations.

      Hardly any other people is as rich in beautiful, praiseworthy, but still distinctive family names as is the German people. And if Jews have acquired them or are attempting to acquire them today, it is their unmistakable intention to conceal themselves behind the variety of these German name forms so that they can continue undisturbed to pursue their Jewish business. Jewish name camouflage has been so successful that today there are real live Jews bearing the names Mueller or Schmidt who are immediately accepted as Folk-Comrades by trusting and naive Germans.

      Since in every marriage in Germany the maiden name of a woman is replaced by the family name of her husband, and the children of such a marriage bear only these family names, this results in every case in the „disappearance“ of the mother‘s maiden name, whether Jewish or not. Fahrenkrog cannot have been referring to this standard situation, though he was hardly concerned with logical argumentation. He was on a hateful rant against Jew names, that is, Jewish given names, without giving rational reasons (assuming there were any). So he thundered:

      For the National Socialist German, who is obviously an enemy of the Jews, it is selfevident that no Jewish names should be chosen. His children have a natural right to bear German names.

      All this lay hidden from the reader of the Frankfurter Zeitung. Such a reader was told only that another person had demanded German names for German children. It is not clear what the editorial board hoped to do by so basically changing the content and the purport of the article in question as to render it seemingly harmless.

      The introductory sentence of the article in The New Folk is striking for another reason. There — and thus in the Frankfurter Zeitung — the subject is a recently released directive of the Reich and Prussian Minister of the Interior, according to which Jews from then on should bear only Jewish given names. Since this sentence appears in the August issue of The New Folk, and on August 11, 1938, the Frankfurter Zeitung already cites this article, the phrase recently released directive can refer only to a directive published shortly before August 1938. But there was no such directive! Not yet. It appeared exactly one week after the article was published in the Frankfurter Zeitung, that is, on August 17, 1938. Guidelines on administration appeared on August 18. While writing his article for the August issue, the author must have assumed that the directive would have already come out. Where he got his information is an open question.

      The other article, German and Jewish Given Names, had appeared in the Frankfurter Zeitung on August 7, 1938, and concerned a decision of the Supreme Court on Civil Matters in Berlin of July 1, 1938, published August 5, 1938. The Private Telegram of the Frankfurter Zeitung column began with these words:

      A registrar is not obligated to register a typically Jewish given name for a pure-blood German child. In one sentence, that is the essence of the decision pronounced on July 1 by the Prussian Supreme Court on Civil Matters and published in German Justice.

      The trial involved the name Josua (Joshua in English), which a forest ranger named Lassen from Marienwerder had intended for his son. The name was rejected by the Supreme Court as typically Jewish. The version published in the professional journals would have been available to the responsible registrar in Gelsenkirchen when he was to decide about the given name of Esther. Pastor Luncke, had he read the Frankfurter Zeitung of August 7, 1938, could not escape the conclusion that in the view of the Supreme Court the name Esther as well would be considered typically Jewish and thus not admissible for German children. Following the reasoning of the Supreme Court as conveyed in the Frankfurter Zeitung, this fate was to be shared by the name Esther with the names Josua, Abraham, Israel, Samuel, Salomon, and Judith. Consequently, the registrar in Gelsenkirchen refused to enter the name Esther in the book of births, since it was a typically Jewish name.

      No more talk about senseless, ridiculous, or offensive – typically Jewish was now enough. Typically Jewish as a grounds for refusal was new. That’s why the Josua decision of the Supreme Court merits closer consideration. It must be read under a magnifying glass to understand it depths and its shoals. After all, this decision is one of the two most important decisions on the law of names made by the Supreme Court on Civil Matters in its role as an authoritative court.

      The king loved Esther more than all the other women, and she won his grace and favor more than all the virgins. So he set a royal diadem on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti.

      Book of Esther, 2:17

      Andrea del Castagno c. 1450